First, we would like to applaud the sovereign nation of Apatosaurus on an admirable and well-pondered submission on a quite sensitive and important topic. Our following concerns are presented not as a slight on the wisdom of creating formal legislation on this issue, nor the motives of the submitting nation. We do, however, have concerns with the idea of medically assisted suicide as mandated policy on the following bases:
While we appreciate and applaud the effort of placing the burden of suicide on the state in whatever form it takes rather than on the individual, we question the efficacy of the following article,
'No person, group of persons, or member state may deliberately coerce or require an individual to seek or receive assisted suicide. Similarly, it is prohibited for any person, group of persons or member state to deliberately coerce or require an individual against seeking or receiving assisted suicide.'
The Assembly of Regional Communes questions how sweepingly the term 'deliberate' applies to various forms of state violence and neglect upon the predominant subject of medically assisted suicide — the elderly and disabled. It is worth noting that in both state and private care, disabled patients and in particular those of marginalized racial and economic backgrounds are subject to harsh abuse by medical staff and care providers. This means persons who are sick or disabled but would otherwise live worthwhile and good lives with adequate care are subject to physical and psychological torture that goes far beyond the pain they experience in their day-to-day lives as part of their physiological conditions. We believe it is a valid concern to raise while already many states are complicit in the social murder of their disabled populace through systematic neglect, providing a more perceptibly compassionate method of ending their lives to relieve their perceived 'burden' on the private and state health systems in turn risks those who — even with the addendum of 'informed consent' — may see their conditions as part of the information that leads to their decision to consent to medically assisted suicide. In such a case, is it suicide? Or is it social murder? This is a problem we feel this piece of legislation fails to address with such a small portion of the legislation assigned to acknowledging the potential risk of coercion.
We realize this doesn't provide an alternative, and we regret not being able to address this issue with enough time as to allow for a revision of this proposal. Any alternative that we would view positively would disallow assisted suicide in any country that, after independent investigation of the medical and care system that obtained testimony from both professionals and in particular patients, proved to be harming the health — either physically or psychologically — of disabled and/or marginalized patients. This, or being accompanied by legislation that outlined and mandated measures for disabled patients that addressed systematic neglect and ableism within the medical and care system. As it stands, we welcome a response that alleviates our concerns, but for now we are voting no and advise other nations do the same.
